Pitching Quiches by Sarah Rose Etter

It’s a spectacular spectacle. Under the moon, on the darkened front lawn, Mr. Rosemary’s form is pitching quiches against the linoleum siding of Margaret Holly’s house.

“You got an arm?” he asks, looking up from a stack of filled frilled tins.

“No, Mr. Rosemary, I do not,” I say. I light a cigarette as he picks up a Quiche Lorraine and hefts it in his right hand. I am not entirely sure how he obtained these quiches.

Once a quiche is air born, the outcome is inevitable: It, like so many quiches before it, punches into the side of Margaret Holly’s house, the tin making a hollow reverberating sound as eggs and crust are liberated from the silver, broccoli and red pepper slivers dusting the grass.

Mr. Rosemary takes a deep breath and rolls up his sleeves. He wipes dark drops from his brow. Even in the cool night air, the quiche tossing creates a sweat. The perspiration looks thick in the night, against his skin and in marks on his shirt, beneath the arm pits.

“No arm on you, huh?” he asks. “Shoulda asked Josh to come, too. I can’t throw all these quiches alone.”

Josh works in Accounting. I am glad he is not here.

I watch as Mr. Rosemary picks up the next Quiche Lorraine.

~

Mr. Rosemary had picked me up at promptly ten o’clock, as he promised. When he asked to see me so late, his voice curling through telephone wires and charming the lobes of my ears, I spritzed myself with perfume five minutes before he arrived. I believed this late-night visit involved his undying love for me. I wanted to smell like apples.

Instead, once I was in the car, he pointed to the backseat. There was a giant box.

“I got these quiches cheap,” he said. “50 of em! For nothing!’

“Quiches?”

“They’re for Margaret Holly,” he said.

That goddamned Margaret Holly again, that’s what I thought. I’d heard about her perfectly straight flaxen hair for weeks. I’d watched his eyes cling to her breasts every time she walked past us in the office. Margaret Holly was a perfect bore with perky tits, is what I thought. Without those breasts, she’d be in big trouble in the big scheme of things, is also what I thought.

I usually think of Margaret Holly in my cube, at work. My cube is dark grey and it is a square missing one side. When I sit in my cube, I picture subtle ways to ruin Margaret Holly’s life: Playboy subscriptions sent to her work address, filling her shoes with peanut butter while she runs on the treadmill in the company gym, replacing the mayonnaise on her turkey sandwich with some sort of bleach paste.

“What’s Margaret Holly want with fifty quiches?”

“Well, it’s a variety of quiches, I’ll have you know. It’s Quiche Lorraine, mostly, but also some Broccoli-Cheddar quiche that smells rather delightful. There’s a veggie Quiche too, but we’re splitting hairs here.”

“So you’re going to give her quiches.”

“I was planning to, yes.”

“Was?”

“I have a new plan. Margaret Holly cannot seem to find the time to go to the movies with me on Friday night, so I’ll be aggressively delivering the quiches.”

I nodded and looked out the window. Streetlamps were limply illuminating dull circles around their bases. The smell of the quiche overtook my perfume. It snuck through the air vents and blasted scents of egg and cream into my face.

~

Margaret Holly’s house is a town house, to be exact. Coupling that with Mr. Rosemary’s poor aim means the next quiche inadvertently hits the window of a neighboring house. Egg clings to the screen. My ears perk up and wait for the onslaught of sirens.

Mr. Rosemary looks handsome pitching the quiches. At work, he is quiet at the copy machine, timid as he faxes his faxes. His tie is perfectly tied around his neck at all times. Tonight, there is no tie and the top buttons of his shirt are unbuttoned, liberating this patch of curling hair that I have never seen. This is a new level of intimacy for Mr. Rosemary and myself.

Mr. Rosemary adds a twist to the next quiche toss. He takes a stance like a discus thrower in an Olympic qualifier. He holds the quiche under his wrist, his fingers wrapped around the tin. He spins on Margaret Holly’s front lawn and releases with grace. The judges would give out 10s, if they were here. Applause would light up the air like fireworks. The crowd would go wild. This particular quiche smashes into Margaret Holly’s dark front porch light, raining crust down on the concrete steps.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize.”

“Ok.”

“I’m just frankly sick of women smelling nice. It’s one of those grating things a man can’t shake.”

He smells nice. He smells like unshaven beards and bathroom sinks and small leather cases of razors and aftershave and pillow cases. He smells like the secret parts of men, the space behind the bathroom mirror, shelves lined with cologne. I would curl into the hollow just beneath his neck if he would let me.

“Throw one quiche for me, doll,” he says.

Doll. The word doll. It’s in my head and I twirl it around like a thick milkshake, a liquid vanilla marble in my mouth. Doll. Four letters. They came out of his mouth. He thought the word Doll and then it traveled down to his tongue and rolled out from between his lips. He’s never called me that before. Doll and chest hair is enough for me. I am close enough, closer than I ever was.

“Which kind would you like me to throw?” I ask.

Mr. Rosemary stops on the front lawn and looks at me in the darkness. The limp street lamps cannot reach us. His eyes are sharp as stars, dark burn, through the night color around us. I look directly into them and I hold it straight, the gaze. I don’t waver. He doesn’t either.

“You would look lovely with a Quiche Lorraine,” he says.

Before I can move, Mr. Rosemary has sprinted back to the box of quiche and plucked one up for me. He comes across the lawn carrying it like a gift. I keep my eyes trained to his. When he hands me the tin, our fingers brush. It feels like static cling between our skin. He does not seem to notice.

“Thank you,” I say. This is the most romantic thing anyone has ever done for me. The quiche is in my hands now. My heart aches.

“You’re welcome. Would you like some help with the throw?”

“Ok.”

Mr. Rosemary changes positions. He stands behind me now, the way men in movies stand behind girls playing pool to teach them how to shoot the cue. His chest presses into my back and I can feel his breath on my shoulders, through my shirt.

“Let’s throw this one like a Frisbee,” Mr. Rosemary says.

I hold the pie tin in my fingers as he instructs. He runs his hand down my arm and wraps his fingers over mine.

“That’s right,” he murmurs.

When I pull my arm back over my shoulder, he mirrors the motion with his body. With force, we toss the quiche forward. It spirals through the air, actually sails, it is perfect in the motion we have created together. It spins like a UFO over a desert. It arches up through the air with a velocity until it collides with one of Margaret Holly’s windows.

I turn and smile at Mr. Rosemary.

“Very good,” he says. “Would you like to try another?”

I nod. Mr. Rosemary makes his way over to the giant cardboard box on the front lawn and bends over to retrieve another quiche. Just then, Margaret Holly’s front porch light comes on, illuminating a lawn covered in eggs and tins.

Mr. Rosemary stands up and walks towards me, three quiches stacked in one hand. His eyes are back to stars and I am not wavering. He places two of the quiches on the lawn and steps behind me again.

Then I can see a form moving through a hallway inside the house, and then Margaret Holly’s eyes peering through the blinds, watching us on the front lawn. I know that somewhere in that house are her perfect breasts, attached to her.

But behind me, Mr. Rosemary’s fingers are finding my hand and my hand is holding a quiche. And this time, as we let go, as our fingers push the tin off into the air, to land against the house, the sound of sirens starts and then begins to get louder.

Pitching Quiches by Sarah Rose was read by Danielle Fenemore at the Gentlemen & Players event at Liars' League on Tuesday 12 May

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